


we are never going to get that out of the dreambubble carpet

by revolutionator



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, F/F, Gore, Taxidermy, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-28
Updated: 2012-12-31
Packaged: 2017-11-22 17:34:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/612425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/revolutionator/pseuds/revolutionator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two girls from doomed timelines meet up and learn to hunt, make fine pelts, and snuggle - in something approximating that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a long time ago in a timeline that was very very doomed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veryFresh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veryFresh/gifts).



> Happy New Year! Just for the record, --all-- of your prompts were outstanding and I tried my hand at all of them. This was just the only one that I got a thousand words of mileage out of, and then it ran away with me a little at the end. I hope you enjoy, dear recipient. --kisses!--

The young girl in front of us does not have the time to indulge a captive fanfiction audience by re-iterating her name placronym along with a dramatic second-person declarative.

This is because she is currently descending down flight after flight of stairs to reach the lowest point of the building. In the name of narrative coherency, however, we can reveal that this lunchtop-toting little madam is none other than JADE HARLEY, and that she has approximately four minutes until a predestined meteor obliterates her house and catapults her from this mortal realm.

The air is tightening, and the heat is cranking up to unbearable degrees in which to run. Becquerel canters alongside her, noiseless and compliant for once.  
Jade makes sure to pet him and tell him a lot of nice things when she reaches the bottom of the stairwell. After all, he could have just teleported down here and waited for her! The running is probably a sympathetic dog gesture, telling her that if all her transportalizers have started fizzing and crackling, and therefore robbed her of the ability to warp about her house -- which they have, then he is going to humble himself to accompany her on foot. She is not really sure what she did to earn such a great dog friend, but who is complaining?

Anyway, now that she is at the lowest point of the building it is time to open up her laptop.

A flashing icon at the bottom tells her that her autoblocker has caught a few unwanted messages on pesterchum, but Jade does not care about the texty bullshit of some buttface troll dork! So she ignores the hour old message from arsenicCatnip and opens up a message to someone she actually wants to talk to. A someone who has been disturbingly silent during a very crucial time.

\-- gardenGnostic [GG] began pestering ectoBiologist [EB] \--   
GG: joohhhhnnn   
GG: are you there????   
GG: did something bad happen   
GG: maybe you fell asleep?   
GG: i dont think i will be able to get back up to the atrium where all my stuff is!! especially not in less than 5 minutes with all the transportalizers busted   
GG: i mean i could use bec in a pinch but who is to say there is even anything to do up there if you arent there to help me along   
GG: :(   
GG: ok i am gathering that something bad did happen   
GG: i hope youre okay!!!

So, John is presumably out of commission. Neither Dave or Rose have got in any contact, and even the hour-long silence in the trollslum autoblock is unsettling; one troll who stopped messaging an hour ago is a suspiciously low number.  
Jade has not seen any clouds about this eventuality, so maybe none of this was supposed to happen. Probably. But it is a little hard to come to terms with one's impending mortality, so she decides instead to look at her neglected trollslum.  
Who knows, perhaps arsenicCatnip's waffley funpoking can help her pass the time until she is sizzled up into little bits. Jade invites Bec to rest his bumpy face on her lap while she taps about the holographic interface. He is warm and solid and immeasurably reassuring, even if his fur sparks with neon static beneath her fingers.

\-- arsenicCatnip [AC] began trolling gardenGnostic [GG] -- 

AC:  :33 < *ac sneakily slinks her way into the jade humans cute garden dwelling*   
AC: :33 < *and maybe also into her good graces?*   
AC: :33 < *she also bows her head in apology because she has been looking through her hive with an inappropriate amount of gl33*   
AC: :33 < *she especially loves the stuffing job on the elderly human rival, it is remarkable*   
AC: :33 < *acs tail twitches enticingly in a way that infers that the jade human should jam with her on the exciting topic of trophy preparation*   
AC: :33 < *sigh*   
AC: :33 < it is just not fun when no one is even there to rebuff your roleplay advances   
AC: :33 < cg did tell me to keep obnoxiously roleplaying but i dont know how im meant to work with nothing at all X((   
AC: :33 < and im sure you are a really great roleplayer jade but you arent even giving me a chance after all this time   
AC: :33 < i just cant ever seem to make you believe that i am being serious   
AC: :33 < and also today you look extremely busy and are prussian about all over the place...   
AC: :33 < *ac cleans her whiskers in minor embarrassment for that last one*   
AC: :33 < i probably should have tried another day than the one you enter the game   
AC: :33 < but yes i just wanted to tell you jade that i think your hive is really cool!!   
AC: :33 < the rooms downstairs are a little spooky but i love your pretty human flora chamber   
AC: :33 < and like i said i wish we could talk to you about your cool dead human friend   
AC: :33 < maybe i will try again after you enter the medium   
AC: :33 < see you later!!

Perhaps she was a too quick to spurn arsenicCatnip's roleplay advances. Maybe she is just a little kid? She definitely seems more genuine in this most recent log, not least because half of it isn't in silly catpunese.

This  is the last thing Jade thinks before her house goes up in flames and its walls fall in on her. As last living thoughts go they are not very dramatic or sentimental -- but they do have the effect of placing some tiny influence on where a nest of intergalactic eldritch jellyfish might choose to place her ghost.

And so it came to be that one of a million billion doomed Jade Harleys came to share her unlife with a roleplaying alien catgirl.

 


	2. an introduction to dreambubbology

When she wakes again it doesn't even feel like any time has passed. Bec is gone, though, and so is the laptop; there's a second's worth of smoke and burning fur, a memory of searing pain that has already gone dim. And now she can actually get to her feet and look around.

The house is intact. Her bedroom is intact, though come to think of it she has no idea why it wouldn't be. The lunchtop is trilling away on her desk -- _bringle bringle bring, come read this message right now!!_ . She really has to stop falling asleep so often! One of these days Bec is not going to be around to bail her out, and then what?  
It's late afternoon judging by the sky outside, and she feels mulish and headachey. She had better check the pesterchums quickly in case it's anything drastic or urgent or cloud-related.

It is not anything drastic or urgent, of course. It is some stupid random encounter IM from someone she has never met before.

\-- arsenicCatnip [AC] began trolling gardenGnostic [GG] \--  
AC: :33 < *ac retracts her fearsome claws at the same time as she extends her salmewtations to the sleepy little human girl*  
AC: :33 < *she pads her paws gently on the coverlet and sheds a territorial batch of keratin spokes all over the colorful stuffed prey*  
AC: :33 < *then she curls up and mews entrancingly in a way that implores the human girl to introduce herself, and maybe skritch her ears purrchance? X33*

Oh no.

She is probably one of those guys. The asshole trolls that seem to hone in on Jade's little friendship group. This one has evidently uprooted deep and dark secrets from her past, ones from a forum where she was trying to research the warm and comfortable feelings she got from rolling around on her bed and pretending to be Bec's sister-dog. Her face flushes with blood at the very thought of it. The permanency of the internet is such a double-barrelled gun sometimes! In that both barrels are used to shoot you in the foot when you have outgrown a thing and now find it very silly.

GG: :/  
GG: i dont know how you got my im address but this isnt very cute or funny!  
AC: :33 < *ac lets her ears droop submissively as a peace offuring*  
AC: :33 < *she mews that she is very willing to learn what clawnstitutes as cute and funny in the human culture of roleplay*  
GG: ughhhhh do all of you do that dumb 'human' prefix when you talk it is getting super old!!!  
GG: almost as old as the cat puns! which are already old, after about 5 lines  
GG: if you tell anyone about that forum ill...  
GG: i dont know!  
GG: just dont do it  
GG: i was already sick of random jerks messaging me out of nowhere but this is low even for you!  
AC: :33 < :((  
AC: :33 < sorry  
AC: :33 < i didnt know you were in a bad mood jade i can leave you alone if you like  
GG: well good!!  
GG: wait a minute  
GG: i never told you my name  
GG: did i???? : o  
AC: :33 < um, i think you did  
AC: :33 < maybe it was a while ago  
GG: this is our first conversation  
AC: :33 < drat  
AC: :33 < :((  
AC: :33 < i really didnt want to give the game away that early  
GG: what game?  
GG: ugh this is getting really weird, i feel like i remember that earlier part  
GG: but this not this one???  
GG: and my headache is gone all of a sudden  
GG: and i feel like my bedroom should definitely not all be in order and i dont know why!!  
AC: :33 < well  
AC: :33 < my mewmory is very close to yours right now  
AC: :33 < you could come see me right now if you want :33  
GG: you are really not making this any less confusing!!  
AC: :33 < its kind of hard to concentrate right now  
AC: :33 < try opening your bedroom door and walking out

Jade spends a couple of minutes just looking at the screen in abject confusion. Then she decides that this is hardly the oddest thing that she has ever been asked to do, so she gets up and opens her bedroom door.

Replacing the little stairwell beyond it is a flat hallway, dark and unlit. There isn't much to be gained from hanging about in this popsicle stand, so Jade closes her door neatly behind her and advances into the unknown.

She appears to be in some sort of cave. It's dark in here, but there are some torches burning light against the walls enough to see the furniture - and what furniture. This room has way more dead animals and rocks than any other room she has ever been in.

Other than the smell of blood and the lack of light, however, the place seems kind of...quaint. There are little etchings on the walls, and the torches give the room a curious warmth. If it weren't for the two other inhabitants of the room, Jade might even have been quite comfortable.

Inhabitant #1 is a large fluffy white cat. It is bigger than Bec. It may be bigger than Jade herself. It is draped in the corner, snoring so loudly that both sets of its lips ripple whenever it exhales. The second inhabitant is a little girl, seemingly of Jade's own age. She is short even sitting down, and her limbs and face are plump, and she has bright pixie eyes and a cleft palate. Her hair is very messy, a regular mass of rumpled tangles and shoddily cut ends. She has her laptop open on the slab of rock next to her, and she is elbow-deep inside the stomach of a very dead, very bloody goat.

She also has horns. And grey skin. And it is hard to tell in the washed-out light of these torches, but it seems as though her sclera are yellow? Maybe if our protagonist were anyone other than Jade Harley, friend to a population of white-shelled carapacians and beloved daughter of a uraniam-powered dog, they might be more perturbed. Thankfully we do not have to inhabit such a dark and dreary world as that one, and so Jade steps forward and clears her throat.

"Um," she starts, aware that her voice sounds loud and odd from under-use, and additionally from being in a cave. "Are you arsenicCatnip?"

The girl looks up, arms still working away at the goat carcass as though she is sat doing cross-stitch. She smiles widely when she sees Jade - she recognises her on sight, apparently - and Jade has a momentary lapse of judgement. She was sure that Catnip's eyes were dark-pupilled and luminous yellow just a few seconds ago, but she couldn't have made that mistake; they're completely blank. Whiter than cataracts, with emphasis on the cat. (Ugh.)

Jade is not a cat person, but she can admit that arsenicCatnip is both effortlessly cute and feline all at once - even her voice is a high and precious thing, when she opens her mouth and talks.

"Jade! You made it!"

"Yeah, I...guess I did?"

"Pawesome!" She retracts one arm from the goatly innards, then wipes it down the front of her shirt. After inspecting her fingernails for errant gore, she offers her hand. Err, paw? Whatever. "I'm Nepeta. Or arsenicCatnip. The lapter is kind of a meowthful, though."

Jade takes the outstretched hand and shakes it. Nepeta's palm is sticky and warm, and somehow not entirely unpleasant even in spite of these two things. She catches sight of herself in one of the compound window panes; a tall spindly girl, slightly stooped, with her hair fluffed up from sleeping and her eyes bleary behind her glasses. She feels self-conscious as she sits down across from Nepeta; she does not pay much attention to the goat.

Nepeta continues scrolling away on her laptop, looks through a log from some navy-texted individual for a few minutes. Jade looks around the room again, more carefully - now that she looks closer she can see that many of the wall scribbles are hunting stories, lovingly rendered. There are some doodles of Nepeta herself frolicking with the giant sleeping cat, fellow horned friends with broken teeth and scowling faces.

Eventually, though: "Um, Nepeta?"

"Yes?" She doesn't look up.

"What the heck is going on? Maybe it is normal for you to just wander off your own planet and into a world where people have horns, or don't have them, but it is kind of wigging me out."

She pauses before continuing. "And you did tell me that you would explain."

Nepeta unleashes a last bout of furious scrolling and then closes the laptop entirely. When she turns to face Jade she looks a little aggravated - but her expression clears up in seconds. "You're right. Sorry, when you spend so much time floating around in memory you get kinda caught up in old yarns."

"You keep saying memory-"

"We're in one right now," Nepeta cuts in. There is a playful edge to her words that says, hey, you asked for an explanation so no interruptions. "Lots of people come into them and drift about, but mostly they're a storing place for sleeping now that the moons are gone."

"Prospit is gone?" Oh no. Now THAT is a downer. Or it would be, if Jade didn't feel so oddly placated by her environment. Still, she looks at her hands for a while, trying to pull her thoughts and feelings together -- _how_ could Prospit be gone, though, when she hadn't even gotten John to wake up yet?

Nepeta pads her fingertips on Jade's shoulder. "Derse too! It was a very long time ago, but it also feels like no time at all. But Feferi pulled some strings in the Furthest Ring so now we can all gambol about in here instead, in our own memories. And yours too, Jade! I could go see your room if you wanted to show me."

"This is a lot to get my head around," Jade says eventually. Which it is.

"That's okay," says Nepeta, and she smiles at her. "You'll have lots of time to get your head around it, Jade. You're dead, you see, you'll probably remember it soon enough. So you have as much time as you want to get used to it. It didn't take me very long at all."

It makes sense in a primal way that doesn't make any sense at all. Jade remembers the bright heat and the whining of Bec's voice in her ears; the frustration that no one was answering any of her pesterchum messages. Her own eyes look milky and distorted, now that she looks at the window pane again. She swallows.

"I remember," she tries not to let her voice croak too much, "and I remember that you were interested in my...hive? About how I stuffed my Grandpa."

"Oh, yes!" Nepeta claps her hands together all at once. Her fingernails are thick, a jaundiced yellow. They are flecked with a lot of blood for such a little girl. "It was re _maw_ kable how life-like he was, I remember! I thought he was going to move around when I was looking through the viewport."

"Yes, he does that."

"You should show me how to do it, Jade! I am turning this gruffbeast that I caught into a wall decoration and I am just no good at it whatsoever." Nepeta gnaws at the back of her hand as though her lack of aptitude at skinning animals is a real social faux-pas, as though she already regrets letting Jade know about it. "We have as much time here as we want...But, of course, that's only if you _want_ to stay here and help me out. There's plenty of other memories where-"

Jade is already smoothing out the skin with her own palms. She has a set expression on her thin face - she is being called on for assistance here, and damned if she is going to do a bad job of something when explicitly asked for help! When she puts her own hands into the animal to help hollow out the insides, her hands bump into Nepeta's. She looks at her nervously; then smiles.

"I was meant to be playing a game that saved the world today, you know," she tells Nepeta.

"I know," Nepeta answers cheerily enough, "and you do. In some other timeline somewhere. You learn to stop caring about those sort of things."

 


	3. pillow talk

Eventually Jade does stop caring. 

She learns instead to hunt and prepare and clean and cook. They always return to Nepeta's hive -- the huge cat in the corner is in a constant state of sleep, and Nepeta explains that she isn't really real in the way that Jade and herself are, just like how the birds and rabbits and tigers and bears are not really real. Still, the snoring makes for comfortable background noise as they work together, and they do a lot of work. 

They make clothing and accessories and collect hides. There is one growlbeast that is bigger than the two of them combined - they turn him into a trophy and put him in the corner. 

Jade may be better at preparing trophies than Nepeta but she is terrible at hunting. Her legs get tangled up in her skirts when she pounces, for one thing, and her hair is so long that it gets in the way. One day, in a fit of frustration, she hacks it all off with a piece of flint and looks at her reflection in the compound windowpanes. She still looks as small and unskilled as she did on the day that she died. One of the primary embarrassments of dying young is leaving a naive corpse.

Nepeta is fascinated by corpses.

Jade has long gotten used to the smell of blood and fur, but it takes a little longer to acclimatise to the hunger in Nepeta's face when she closes in for the kill, or how she relishes in playing with her food before she finishes it off. It never came across in the pesterlogs but she can be pretty cruel!  
As time passes they progress to bigger prey, and bigger yet. Jade gives up on hunting with her weak human hands, employs her rifle and lets her hair grow long again. This seems to take no time at all. Time flows strangely once you are dead. 

They run into Nepeta's old friends from time to time as they chase prey into other memories - one of them is a short and angry troll boy with a plethora of creative curses at his disposal. He gets even angrier when Jade doesn't remember him. Another one, this one shorter than Nepeta herself and dressed in a ridiculous dragon costume, asks Nepeta if she has caught up with her 'palerail' yet. This is the only time in all of their shared afterlife that Jade has seen Nepeta get visibly upset, though she puts on a brave face in front of the interloper and says she hasn't, but he is in so much trouble for avoiding her once she does! 

Meanwhile Jade catches occasional glimpses of a boy who might go by the alias of turntechGodhead, a girl with a Squiddle shirt escorting a troll girl in green, a boy in blue pajamas sitting next to a silent and unresponsive businessman. She is fairly confident she knows all of them. But while she's deliberating on whether or not to approach them, the opportunity fades. 

The only thing that Jade's human friends have in common with Nepeta's troll ones is that they leave much too quickly, wrapped up in their own death quests.

It is incredibly furstrating.

Frustrating.

 

...Sigh.

 

\--

 

When they're resting after the encounter with the little dragon troll and her upsetting 'palerail' questions, Nepeta spends a longer time than usual preparing her rabbit skins. She looks more distant than usual, and answers Jade's questions in monosyllables. When they curl up next to Pounce de Leon to go to sleep, she finally whispers in the dark: "Jade?"

Jade, overtired, doesn't answer at first.

"Jade," more urgently now, "I've been thinking that maybe we could...That maybe hunting animals isn't enough anymeow."

"?"

"I want to hunt people," Nepeta whispers against the outer-shell of Jade's ear. Quietly. At least she has the good grace to sound embarrassed."We could keep them here forever, where they can't leave. You could do it, Jade, if you helped. I could help you catch them and you could purrserve them."

She stays quiet for a few moments, clearly waiting for an answer. Jade just stays where she is, silent, unmoving, desperately wishing that the idea didn't have any appeal. Eventually Nepeta curls up against her side and dozes off, but Jade stays awake for a few more hours mulling it over and over in her mind, thinking about all of Nepeta's friends, about Rose and John and Dave, about her own almost-not-quite-fully-dead grandfather.

She searches for Nepeta's clammy hand and grips it tight in promise.


	4. its not quite character development

They start with time players.

It turns out that Nepeta knows a fair amount about the game that Jade never got to play - time players, she explains as they're getting ready, are prone to making a lot of messy offshoot alternate persians of themselves that are doomed to end up here, so it doesn't really matter if she and Jade take a few as keepsakes.

"So that means Akwete Purrmusk from your session," she points out helpfully, "and Miss Megido from mine. She has huge curly horns-" (gestures are made) "-and a tonne of hair, and I think sometimes she is in a beautiful red fairy outfit. That one is off limits. I don't actually think we could kill her if we tried."

Jade imparts all her knowledge about Dave Strider as though he is an interesting and curious animal in an encyclopaedia, something she is sure he would be thrilled to know if things weren't destined to end with Nepeta clawing his throat open. While at first she is sure that the memories will shift to obscure both time players from their sights (Jade has noticed that Nepeta and all of her friends seem to be on eternal journeys to find people they never end up meeting) they actually have no problem running into one of the many death cycles of Aradia Megido.

She is a tricky opponent and she senses them coming. They corner her inside one of her own memories, studded with broken buildings and secret tombs; she has them at a serious disadvantage and knows it. Even though she is already dead, she gives them a good run for their money as a ghost -- leads them into a labyrinth of darkened chambers, nimbly dodges their traps and tears down the cramped hallways like a woman possessed.

Jade aims carefully down the hall and clips her leg with a bullet.

Aradia stumbles, robbed of her clumsy grace, continues to run regardless.

They watch her stagger her frantic way down the aisle, a shambling frightened faun with no hope of escape.

Jade shoots her in the other leg.

There is a look of terrible recognition in Aradia Megido's blank-eyed face when they both bear down upon her, two starkly different silhouettes in a lonely corridor. Nepeta pounces. The sound of teeth on troll flesh is quiet and it doesn't last for very long -- Jade wonders why then does it echo in her head for hours afterwards?

Nepeta does admit on the way back to the hive that she didn't actually expect to be able to kill her. Not only is she way stronger and faster than Nepeta herself, can you really kill a ghost and keep its corpse? There have been technicolor cracks appearing in the sky above Nepeta's hive, so maybe the fragile reality set-up in this afterlife is coming to a end. Jade isn't sure. Something she _is_ sure about is that Aradia is going to look beautiful - once they've sewed her throat back together and cleaned up that necklace of rapidly-drying maroon blood.

For a while, Aradia is enough. Nepeta chats to her idly while she's drawing, asks if she's seen Equius lately, how Sollux is doing. Jade finds herself talking to her sometimes too, without even thinking about it - one time she brushes all of Aradia's hair over her shoulders and fancies that she can feel the troll girl breathing beneath her. Her shoulders are like a stiff doll's. Nepeta catches Jade playing with the trophy and stands up on the tippiest-toes to kiss her over Aradia's shoulder. They treat her hair to keep it pretty. It smells like a veil of chemicals, to kiss beneath it.

 

Then they find Rose.

 

Rose, not a time player, sits waiting for them in a memory of Jade's own making. It's one of their first conversations, back when Jade was hunting her out based on glimpses she saw in the skies of Skaia. They were disputing something about the season finale of the Saturday morning Squiddles! cartoon.

Rose realises that she is dead very quickly, and she looks at Jade with raised eyebrows that convey what her pupilless eyes cannot; Is this what she's doing with her afterlife, really? She always suspected there was something odd about her.

Nepeta goes for the killing lunge but Jade gets there first. She presses the nose of her gun right up against Rose's gentle hillock of a belly, and after she pulls the trigger, when Rose is lying there in her double-death throes, she kisses her on the cheek.

 

And so it goes on.

 

They gain a personalised museum of taxidermied friends. They position them decoratively; Rose and Aradia, who may have never met, end up in a sensual embrace next to one of Nepeta's shipping walls. A young bespectacled lady and a troll in a bright red sweater -- accidental victims -- hold each other just outside the entrance. They gain many more trolls, and Nepeta lists their names off agreeably; Sollux, Karkat, Terezi, Tavros. They find a Dave, and turn him and Terezi into attractive bookends. A young man in ridiculously short shorts catches Jade's eye and she spends a very long time preparing him, the longest time she has spent on anyone since her own grandfather. He reminds her of John.

They never run across John himself in their travels. Nor do they find any iteration of Nepeta's lionized 'palerail'. After a million Daves and a million Aradias that they don't bother catching anymore, Nepeta finally lets go and cries all over Jade's shoulders while she is making dinner. Lately Jade has taken to wondering why they even bother with dinner. Ghosts don't need to eat!

"I really miss him," Nepeta whimpers into Jade's shoulder later that night. "He was always angrrry, and a lot of the time he was a big stupid no-fun jerk, but I miss him. It feels like this stupid place is keeping us apart _purrposefurry_."

"Is that why we started hunting people?"

"Maybe," Nepeta nuzzles her face against Jade's collar and sighs. Her eyes are damp, and the lashes have clumped together. "I just wanted to see him again, somehow. What use is an afterlife where you don't get to see your best friend?"

Jade thinks of stupid John lying in his bed, never waking up, scrawling self-directed insults on his wall. She looks up at Rose, dark and pretty and framed with the black ivy trails of Aradia's hair; she looks over at Dave, face hidden with his own ill-gotten copy of Stiller shades. They look waxy in the light of Nepeta's torches, unreal, like those creepy dolls you can order from special websites.

For the first time in a long time, she starts to shiver; when did she get so okay with the idea of prowling throughout the afterlife in hunt of her own friends? How did she get so good at taxidermy that even now those murdered friends seem real, inviting, _happy_?

But then it's hard to hold onto that feeling of revulsion. They are all dead here together, she thinks as she burrows her face into Nepeta's throat. Nepeta sighs and clutches her hands into Jade's hair, ever-uncaring of the animal fat beneath her claws or her bloodied knuckles.

"I used to think things never changed here," Jade confesses. "But we did, didn't we? We got...weirder."

"Yeah," Nepeta presses the sloppiest, toothiest kiss to Jade's ear. "But it's okay. I like being weird with you. I just want to find him. You understand, right?"

Jade thinks about John and Rose and Dave again, and shrugs her shoulders. Nepeta giggles. Their friends watch, passive, ambivalent.

"You know, I think I've stopped caring about that sort of stuff," Jade says. It feels like maybe she has said it once before, or maybe a million times, or only heard it? Who cares. "You learn to, after a while."


End file.
